Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jeffersonwas an American Founding Father who was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. He was elected the second Vice President of the United States, serving under John Adams and in 1800 was elected the third President. Jefferson was a proponent of democracy, republicanism, and individual rights, which motivated American colonists to break from Great Britain and form a new nation. He produced formative documents and decisions at both the state and national level...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionUS President
Date of Birth13 April 1743
CityShadwell, VA
CountryUnited States of America
I thank heaven that the 4th. of July is over. It is always a day of great fatigue to me, and of some embarrassments from improper intrusions and some from unintended exclusions.
So much of the presidency is a matter of standing in the path of a Newsham Engine for Quenching Fires, opening one's mouth, and attempting to get a drink.
Trade liberty for safety or money and you'll end up with neither. Liberty, like a grain of salt, easily dissolves. The power of questioning - not simply believing - has no friends. Yet liberty depends on it.
Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched?
I deny the power of the general government to making paper money, or anything else a legal tender.
Above all I hope that the education of the common people will be attended to so they won't forget the basic principles of freedom.
Instead of that liberty which takes root and growth in the progress of reason, if recovered by mere force or accident, it becomes with an unprepared people a tyranny still of the many, the few, or the one.
May it be to the world... to assume the blessings and security of self-government.
Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.
The benefit of even limited monopolies is too doubtful, to be opposed to that of their general suppression.
How soon the labor of men would make a paradise of the earth were it not for misgovernment and a diversion of his energies to selfish interests.
The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance
No society is so precious as that of one’s own family.
ONLY a government that is AFRAID of its citizens tries to control them.